Chapter 32 of 49 · 3777 words · ~19 min read

Part 32

In 1598 we find Casaubon at Lyons, superintending the passage of his Athenaeus through the press, for which he had been unable to find facilities at Montpellier. Here he lived in the house of Meric de Vicq, _surintendant de la justice_, a Catholic, but a man of acquirements, whose connexions were with the circle of liberal Catholics in Paris. In the suite of De Vicq Casaubon made a flying visit to Paris, and was presented to Henry IV. The king was very gracious, and said something about employing Casaubon's services in the "restoration" of the fallen university of Paris. Full of hope he returned to Montpellier. In January 1599, he received a summons to repair to Paris. But the terms of the letter missive were so vague that, though it bore the sign manual, Casaubon hesitated to act upon it. However, he resigned his chair at Montpellier, but instead of hastening to Paris, he lingered more than a year at Lyons, in De Vicq's house, where he hoped to meet the king, who was expected to visit the south. Nothing more was heard about the professorship, but instead he was summoned by De Vicq, who was then in Paris, to come to him in all haste on an affair of importance. The business proved to be the Fontainebleau Conference. Casaubon allowed himself to be persuaded to sit as one of the referees who were to adjudicate on the challenge sent to Du Plessis Mornay by Cardinal Duperron. By so doing he placed himself in a false position, as Scaliger said: "Non debebat Casaubon interesse colloquio Plessiaeano; erat asinus inter simias, doctus inter imperitos" (_Scaligerana_ 2^[alpha]). The issue was so contrived that the Protestant party could not but be pronounced to be in the wrong. By concurring in the decision, which was unfavourable to Du Plessis Mornay, Casaubon lent the prestige of his name to a court whose verdict would without him have been worthless, and confirmed the suspicions already current among the Reformed churches that, like his friend and patron, Canaye du Fresne, he was meditating abjuration. From this time forward he became the object of the hopes and fears of the two religious parties; the Catholics lavishing promises, and plying him with arguments; the Reformed ministers insinuating that he was preparing to forsake a losing cause, and only higgling about his price. We now know enough of Casaubon's mental history to know how erroneous were these computations of his motives. But, at the time, it was not possible for the immediate parties to the bitter controversy to understand the intermediate position between Genevan Calvinism and Ultramontanism to which Casaubon's reading of the fathers had conducted him.

Meantime the efforts of De Thou and the liberal Catholics to retain him in Paris were successful. The king repeated his invitation to Casaubon to settle in the capital, and assigned him a pension. No more was said about the university. The recent reform of the university of Paris had closed its doors to all but Catholics; and though the chairs of the College de France were not governed by the statutes of the university, public opinion ran so violently against heresy, that Henry IV. dared not appoint a Calvinist to a chair, even if he had desired to do so. But it was designed that Casaubon should succeed to the post of sub-librarian of the royal library when it should become vacant, and a patent of the reversion was made out in his favour. In November 1604, Jean Gosselin died in extreme old age; and Casaubon succeeded him as sub-librarian, with a salary of 400 livres in addition to his pension.

In Paris Casaubon remained till 1610. These ten years were the brightest period of his life. He had attained the reputation of being, after Scaliger, the most learned man of the age,--an age in which learning formed the sole standard of literary merit. He was placed above penury, though not in easy circumstances. He had such facilities for religious worship as a Huguenot could have, though he had to go out of the city to Hablon, and afterwards to Charenton, for them. He enjoyed the society of men of learning, or of men who took an interest in learned publications. He had the best opportunities of seeing men of letters from foreign countries as they passed through Paris. Above all, he had ample facilities for using Greek books, both printed and in MS., the want of which he had felt painfully at Geneva and Montpellier, and which no other place but Paris could at that period have supplied.

In spite of all these advantages we find Casaubon restless, and ever framing schemes for leaving Paris, and settling elsewhere. It was known that he was open to offers, and offers came to him from various quarters,--from Nimes, from Heidelberg, from Sedan. His friends Lect and Giovanni Diodati wished, rather than hoped, to get him back to Geneva. The causes of Casaubon's discomfort in Paris were various, but the principal source of uneasiness lay in his religion. The life of any Huguenot in Paris was hardly secure at that time, for it was doubtful if the police of the city was strong enough to protect them against any sudden uprising of the fanatical mob, always ready to re-enact the St Bartholomew. But Casaubon was exposed to persecution of another sort. Ever since the Fontainebleau Conference an impression prevailed that he was wavering. It was known that he rejected the _outre_ anti-popery opinions current in the Reformed churches; that he read the fathers, and wished for a church after the pattern of the primitive ages. He was given to understand that he could have a professorship only by recantation. When it was found that he could not be bought, he was plied by controversy. Henry IV., who liked Casaubon personally, made a point of getting him to follow his own example. By the king's orders Duperron was untiring in his efforts to convert him. Casaubon's knowledge of the fathers was that of a scholar, Duperron's that of an adroit polemist; and the scholar was driven to admit that the polemist was often too hard for him. These encounters mostly took place in the king's library, over which the cardinal, in his capacity of aumonier, exercised some kind of authority; and it was therefore impossible for Casaubon to avoid them. On the other hand, the Huguenot theologians, and especially Pierre du Moulin, chief pastor of the church of Paris, accused him of conceding too much, and of having departed already from the lines of strict Calvinistic orthodoxy.

When the assassination of Henry IV. gave full rein to the Ultramontane party at court, the obsessions of Duperron became more importunate, and even menacing. It was now that Casaubon began to listen to overtures which had been faintly made before, from the bishops and the court of England. In October 1610 he came to England in the suite of the ambassador, Lord Wotton of Marley (brother of Casaubon's early friend), an official invitation having been sent him by Richard Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. He had the most flattering reception from James I., who was perpetually sending for him to discuss theological matters. The English bishops were equally delighted to find that the great French scholar was an Anglican ready made, who had arrived, by independent study of the Fathers, at the very _via media_ between Puritanism and Romanism, which was becoming the fashion in the English Church. Casaubon, though a layman, was collated to a prebendal stall in Canterbury, and a pension of L300 a year was assigned him from the exchequer. Nor were these merely paper figures. When Sir Julius Caesar made a difficulty about payment, James sent a note in his own hand: "Chanceler of my excheker, I will have Mr Casaubon paid before me, my wife, and my barnes." He still retained his appointments in France, and his office as librarian. He had obtained leave of absence for a visit to England, where his permanent settlement was not contemplated. In order to retain their hold upon him, the government of the queen regent refused to allow his library to be sent over. It required a special request from James himself to get leave for Madame Casaubon to bring him a part of his most necessary books. Casaubon continued to speak of himself as the servant of the regent, and to declare his readiness to return when summoned to do so.

Meanwhile his situation in London gradually developed unforeseen sources of discomfort. Not that he had any reason to complain of his patrons, the king and the bishops. James continued to the last to delight in his company, and to be as liberal as the state of his finances allowed. John Overall had received him and his whole family into the deanery of St Paul's, and entertained him there for a year. Overall and Lancelot Andrewes, then bishop of Ely, were the most learned men of a generation in which extensive reading was more general among the higher clergy than it has ever been since. These two were attracted to Casaubon by congenial studies and opinions. With the witty and learned bishop of Ely in particular Casaubon was always happy to spend such hours as he had to spare from the labours of the study. Andrewes took him to Cambridge, where he met with a most gratifying reception from the notabilities of the university. They went on together to Downham, where Casaubon spent six weeks of the summer of 1611, in which year he became naturalized. In 1613 he was taken to Oxford by Sir Henry Savile, where, amid the homage and feasting of which he was the object, his principal interest was for the MSS. treasures of the Bodleian. The honorary degree which was offered him he declined.

But these distinctions were far from compensating the serious inconveniences of his position. Having been taken up by the king and the bishops, he had to share in their rising unpopularity. The courtiers looked with a jealous eye on a pensioner who enjoyed frequent opportunities of taking James I. on his weak side--his love of book talk--opportunities which they would have known how to use. Casaubon was especially mortified by Sir Henry Wotton's persistent avoidance of him, so inconsistent with their former intimacy. His windows were broken by the roughs at night, his children pelted in the streets by day. On one occasion he himself appeared at Theobalds with a black eye, having received a blow from some ruffian's fist in the street. The historian Hallam thinks that he had "become personally unpopular"; but these outrages from the vulgar seem to have arisen solely from the cockney's antipathy to the Frenchman. Casaubon, though he could make shift to read an English book, could not speak English, any more than Mme Casaubon. This deficiency not only exposed him to insult and fraud, but restricted his social intercourse. It excluded him altogether from the circle of the "wits"; either this or some other cause prevented him from being acceptable in the circle of the lay learned--the "antiquaries." William Camden, the antiquary and historian, he saw but once or twice. Casaubon had been imprudent enough to correct Camden's Greek, and it is possible that the ex-head-master of Westminster kept himself aloof in silent resentment of Casaubon's superior learning. With Robert Cotton and Henry Spelman he was slightly acquainted. Of John Selden we find no mention. Though Sir Henry Savile ostensibly patronized him, yet Casaubon could not help suspecting that it was Savile who secretly prompted an attempt by Richard Montagu to forestall Casaubon's book on Baronius. Besides the jealousy of the natives, Casaubon had now to suffer the open attacks of the Jesuit pamphleteers. They had spared him as long as there were hopes of getting him over. The prohibition was taken off, now that he was committed to Anglicanism. Not only Joannes Eudaemon, Heribert Rosweyd and Scioppius (Gaspar Schoppe),[1] but a respectable writer, friendly to Casaubon, Andreas Schott of Antwerp, gave currency to the insinuation that Casaubon had sold his conscience for English gold.

But the most serious cause of discomfort in his English residence was that his time was no longer his own. He was perpetually being summoned out of town to one or other of James's hunting residences that the king might enjoy his talk. He had come over from Paris in search of leisure, and found that a new claim on his time was established. The king and the bishops wanted to employ his pen in their literary warfare against Rome. They compelled him to write first one, then a second, pamphlet on the subject of the day,--the royal supremacy. At last, ashamed of thus misappropriating Casaubon's stores of learning, they set him upon a refutation of the _Annals_ of Baronius, then in the full tide of its credit and success. Upon this task Casaubon spent his remaining strength and life. He died in great suffering on the 1st of July 1614. His complaint was an organic and congenital malformation of the bladder; but his end was hastened by an unhealthy life of over-study, and latterly by his anxiety to acquit himself creditably in his criticism on Baronius. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. The monument by which his name is there commemorated was erected in 1632 by his friend Thomas Morton when bishop of Durham.

Besides the editions of ancient authors which have been mentioned, Casaubon published with commentaries Persius, Suetonius, the _Scriptores Historiae Augustae_. The edition of Polybius, on which he had spent vast labour, he left unfinished. His most ambitious work was his revision of the text of the _Deipnosophistae_ of Athenaeus, with commentary. The Theophrastus perhaps exhibits his most characteristic excellences as a commentator. The _Exercitationes in Baronium_ are but a fragment of the massive criticism which he contemplated; it failed in bringing before the reader the uncritical character of Baronius's history, and had only a moderate success, even among the Protestants. His correspondence (in Latin) was finally collected by Van Almeloveen (Rotterdam, 1709), who prefixed to the letters a careful life of Isaac Casaubon. But this learned Dutch editor was acquainted with Casaubon's diary only in extract. This diary, _Ephemerides_, of which the MS. is preserved in the

## chapter library of Canterbury, was printed in 1850 by the Clarendon

Press. It forms the most valuable record we possess of the daily life of a scholar, or man of letters, of the 16th century. (M. P.)

A few minor changes have been made in the above article, compared with its form in the 9th edition. The most complete account of Casaubon is the full biography by Mark Pattison (1875), of which a second and revised edition, by H. Nettleship, was published in 1892; the most recent work on the subject is _Isaac Casaubon, sa vie et son temps_, by L.J. Nazelle (1897); there is a monograph on the Fontainebleau conference by J.A. Lalot (1889). Casaubon is the subject of one of St Beuve's _Causeries_, the 30th of July 1860 (a notice of the Oxford edition of the _Ephemerides_). See also the article in E. Haag's _La France Protestante_ (1882), and J.E. Sandys, _Hist. of Class. Schol._ vol. ii. (ed. 1908), pp. 204 foll.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Eudaemon was a Cretan, Rosweyd a Dutch, Jesuit; Schoppe, a German philologist and critic.

CASCADE MOUNTAINS, a continuation northward of the Sierra Nevada, some 500 m. across the states of Oregon and Washington, U.S.A., into British Columbia. In American territory the range lies from 100 to 150 m. from the coast. The Cascades are separated on the S. from the Sierras by deep valleys near Mt. Shasta in California, while on the N., somewhat below the international boundary of 49 deg. N., they approach the northern Rockies, mingling with these in inextricable confusion, although their name is given also to the much-broken, river-dissected, central mountain plateau that crosses British Columbia from S.E. to N.W. Geologically the Sierras and Cascades are very different, though their exact relations are not yet clearly determined; topographically they are also different. The Cascades are in general a comparatively low, broad mass surmounted by a number of imposing peaks in Oregon and Washington. Especially north of the Columbia river, the range widens out into a plateau. There are no notable elevations in British Columbia. Evidences of volcanic activity in comparatively recent geologic time are abundant throughout the length of the range, and all the highest summits are volcanic cones, covered with snow fields and, in a number of instances, with glaciers. The grandest peaks are Shasta (14,380 ft.) at the southern end, and Rainier (or Tacoma, 14,363 ft.) in Washington, two of the most magnificent mountains of America. Other notable summits are Mt. Pitt (9760), Mt. Scott (9122), Diamond Peak (8807), Mt. Thielsen (9250), Mt. Jefferson (10,200) and Mt. Hood (11,225), in Oregon; and Stuart (9470), St Helens (10,000), Baker (10,827) and Adams (12,470), in Washington. The Fraser river in the far north, the Columbia at the middle, and the Klamath in the south cut athwart the range to the Pacific, and many minor streams descend the range to swell their waters, while some drain directly from the flanks of the mountains into Puget Sound and Gray's Harbor. The Columbia has cut almost to the sea-level through the great mountain mass, the Dalles being only about 100 ft. above the sea. It is to the Cascades of the tremendous rapids at this point that the mountains owe their name. The slopes of the Cascades, particularly on the west, which has a very much moister climate than the eastern slope, are clothed with magnificent forests, chiefly of coniferous evergreens: firs, pine, tamarack and cedar. The Douglas fir, the "Oregon pine" of commerce, often attaining a height of 250 ft., is one of the most beautiful trees in the world. There are also a variety of deciduous trees, but in the aggregate they are unimportant. In 1910 the mountain forests were largely included in ten national forest reserves, with a total area of nearly 16,000,000 acres, extending from the northern boundary of Washington to the southern boundary of Oregon. The magnificent forest cloak, splendid peaks, great open mountain plateau pastures, and exquisite lakes embosomed in mountain fastnesses and forest gloom, give variety to the scenery, which is often grand, and throughout the range indescribably beautiful, though perhaps not equal to the Sierra Nevada in splended light and colour. Large game--deer, bears, mountain sheep and goats, wolves and panthers--still abound. Two great railway systems, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific, cross the Cascades through noteworthy tunnels; that on the former line is 2-1/2 m. long, that on the latter a little less than 2 m.

See OREGON and WASHINGTON; also G.O. Smith and F.C. Calkins, _A Geological Reconnaissance across the Cascade Range near the Forty-Ninth Parallel_ (Washington, D.C., 1904), being U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 253.

CASE, JOHN (d. 1600), English Aristotelian scholar and physician, was born at Woodstock. He was educated at Oxford, and elected to a fellowship at St John's College, which he was obliged to resign in consequence of his Roman Catholic sympathies. He subsequently opened a philosophical school in Oxford, which was largely attended. He enjoyed a great reputation as a logician and dialectician, and was in addition an authority on music and a distinguished physician. He is described as "a man of an innocent, meek, religious and studious life," an agreeable conversationalist, an enthusiastic teacher, and a great favourite with his pupils. Most of his works were commentaries on various treatises of Aristotle (_Organon, Ethics, Politics, Oeconomics, Physics_) under curious titles; they enjoyed a large circulation during his time, and were frequently reprinted. He was also the author of _The Praise of Musicke_ (1586), dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh.

CASE. (1) (From Lat. _casus_, that which falls or happens; _cadere_, to fall), a word used in various senses traceable to the derivation. In grammar, the "cases" are the various forms in the declension of a noun, adjective or pronoun, the Latin word being a translation of the Greek [Greek: ptosis], falling, applied by Aristotle to the variations from the simple form of the word, whether noun, verb or adjective (of which the adverb would be a [Greek: ptosis]). Later grammarians confined the term to nouns, and included the nominative. In law, "case" is the common term for a cause or suit brought before a court of justice. Certain

## particular legal usages may also be noted. _Action on the case_ means an

## action for the recovery of damages for an injury to the person or

property, where the act done was not immediately injurious (see CONTRACT; TORT). A _case stated_ is a statement of facts drawn up by one court for the opinion of another on a point of law. A _special case_ is a statement of facts agreed to on behalf of two or more litigant

## parties, and submitted for the opinion of a court of justice as to the

law bearing upon the facts so stated. A _leading case_ is a decision which settles some point of importance. In the legal systems of the United Kingdom and of the United States decided cases are considered authoritative for courts of at least equal jurisdiction with those in which the judgments were given, but on the continent of Europe the rule is, following that of the Roman law, that they are instructive but not authoritative.

(2) (O. Fr. _casse_, mod. _chasse_, Lat. _capsa_, from _capere_, to hold; cf. "cash"), a box, sheath or covering. The term is applied to the natural protective covering of seed-vessels, and of a pupa or chrysalis. It is also used of a box containing instruments, pistols, swords, &c., and sometimes of the contents. In building, a "case" is the facing where the backing may be of inferior material; the framework in which a window or door is hung; or the wall surrounding a stair, "staircase" properly signifying the whole structure of walls and stairs. In bookbinding, a "case" means the boards and back in which the books are bound; and in typography, the tray, divided into partitions, containing the type ready for the compositor's use.

CASEMATE (Ital. _casa_, a house, and _matta_, dull or dim), an armoured vault or chamber, or in field fortification, a bombproof shelter; in architecture, a hollow moulding, chiefly employed in cornices.

CASEMENT (from a Lat. form _casamentum_), in architecture, a frame in wood or metal, which holds the glass of a window, and is hung by hinges either at the top, bottom or sides.